Sunday, October 28, 2007

these apples are delicious...

This summer, Steve and I took our first serious foray into organic produce. We purchased a half share of produce from Plan B Organic Farms. Since the beginning of June, we have been enjoying an incredible array of fresh and tasty organic fruits and vegetables.

This was really a huge step for us. Steve and I are both very bad at consuming balanced meals. Protein? No problem! Load us up with meat and cheese and we are happy campers. Throw a salad in front of us and we go out for chicken wings. So committing to a weekly supply of fresh veggies was huge.

I'm proud to report, that we have done pretty well. Much better than I expected. I can't say that we have consumed everything before it became too wilted or moldy to eat, but we tried harder to not throw out too much. Partly it was the psychological aspect of paying a rather large sum of money up front ($450 for 20 weeks) rather than a few bucks every week. But the bigger reason was that this stuff tasted so much better than what we bought in our local grocery store. Flavours were more intense and everything seemed so much fresher.

These tomatoes actually tasted like tomatoes rather than cardboard. I can't remember the last time I ate a store bought tomato that had flavour. Steve borrowed a recipe from our friend Samantha in Regina. He chopped up the tomatoes, put them in a casserole dish, threw in some olive oil and fresh herbs and baked it in the oven. What emerged was delicious, roasted tomato goodness that we ate with pasta. (Thanks Sam!)

I'm not much of a raw carrot eater, but these carrots along with some sweet potatoes and onions (from the first picture) made a delicious soup.

Perhaps the yummiest peppers ever! Slightly sweet with a bit of heat. Steve sliced them, stir fried them with some garlic and when these were cooked, added a few spoonfuls of sour cream until heated through. Yummy!

And by the way, the organic garlic we received (see first picture) is the best garlic ever!!! So intensely flavourful.

Time to head back into the kitchen. These apples are about to become apple crisp.